Monthly Archives: June 2009

There’s a lot of travel ahead but by this time tomorrow we’ll be in Paris.

The wedding was beautiful and we’re glad we made the long journey to be there.

The upside of MV is the obvious; beautiful Cape Cod landscape, fresh fish, and relative seclusion. What doesn’t soothe is all the driving around if you’re trying to meet up with friends in other towns–they aren’t close together by any means. The mosquitos are also totally out of control. But like I said before, great clam chowder.

Since I’m a bit flu-ish and the weather is bad I didn’t make it more than about thirty yards from the house, but I discovered some interesting things nonetheless.

The visual effect of the vine along this trunk is beautiful, but the vine itself looks to be parasitic–I can’t imagine an oak tree being very happy to have vines wrapped around it, but maybe I’m wrong.

I arrived in Boston yesterday at the Omni Parker House (the longest continually operating hotel in the U.S. and reportedly where JFK proposed to Jackie) to a FedEx package containing my U.S. Passport–finally. I can now start being excited about a long-awaited journey without fear of not being allowed in or out of any given country. !!!

I’m trying to decide whether or not to spend any of my vacation time filing a complaint against rushmypassport.com with the Better Business Bureau and disputing the charges for a service they didn’t deliver. I usually err on the side of “it takes too much effort to complain/get back at them,” but I’m feeling kind of like “that’s $300 I could spend on a great afternoon in Provence/Biarritz/San Sebastian.” I haven’t published all the details here, but in addition to my passport taking twice the time they advertised, I received no communication from the company (I have records of at least 6 unreturned emails and 8 unreturned phonecalls, and caught them in a lie…but anyway).

That little red sign in the distance is Boston Chinatown

Right now I’m leaving Boston on a Peter Pan bus to Woods Hole. Pretty motley crew on board–babies, preppy blondes in polos, moms loudly explaining to young children that they can’t sit in the front row because of people with special needs, a middle-aged woman in front of me singly softly to herself. I keep on clearing my throat thinking it might make her realized how close we actually are and how “softly” sounds like “in my ear,” but I’m not sure she’s getting the message. Just looked through the crack between the two seats and realized she and her male companian are sharing a pair of earbuds.